Consistency Effects in Lexical Decision: An Electrophysiological Study
Open Access
- Author:
- Galluzzi, Leah Marie
- Area of Honors:
- Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Maya Misra, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- lexical decision
electrophysiology
consistency
pseudowords - Abstract:
- Many previous behavioral studies have investigated aspects of the lexical decision task and processing of different types of words and pseudowords in this task. While these studies offer important insight into how individuals recognize and process lexical stimuli, there is only limited information about the neural correlates of these events. This study aims to further the existing literature by using event-related potentials to evaluate electrophysiological processing of specific types of stimulus items. In this English lexical decision task, monolingual, native English speaking participants were asked to decide whether or not a stimulus was an English word and respond with a button press. Over the course of the experiment, different conditions (word types) were presented to the participant. Lexical decisions were made in response to words that were cognates in Spanish and English, English words, English-like pseudowords, and Spanish-like pseudowords. The real English words and English-like pseudowords were further broken down into trials with consistent or inconsistent spelling patterns. Consistent words were defined as words with more “friends” (other words in which the word body is pronounced the same) than “enemies” (other words in which the word body is pronounced differently). Inconsistent words had more enemies than friends. Consistent and inconsistent pseudowords were matched to a set of consistent and inconsistent real words. One purpose of conducting this experiment was to compare the electrophysiological effects of processing consistent versus inconsistent stimuli. Another purpose was to determine if the native English speakers could use the spelling patterns as a cue when processing pseudowords. Event-related potential (ERP) data and behavioral measures were collected and analyzed. Results were consistent with previous studies showing that pseudowords produce slower, less accurate responses than real words and larger amplitude ERPs at the N400 component. Comparisons within the real word types and pseudoword types showed small, but fairly consistent differences between conditions suggesting that participants may have been sensitive to the properties of the specific item types.